Barley flour hot biscuits

Just fyi, I made a batch of hot biscuits using half home ground barley flour and half white wholewheat, with a shower of sunflower seeds in the mix.  I baked the dough in one large shape, then sliced it up with a pizza wheel to cool on a rack.

The original recipe was the hot biscuit recipe from The Silver Palate, which I recommend you take a look at. I've changed it over the years, to my own taste, using more olive oil to replace her canola oil plus vanilla essence, and changed up the sorts of flour I've used and so on.  And added in sunflower seeds or crushed walnuts.  And taken to baking the recipe in a big single piece then slicing it into squarish shapes.

But it's still a very good recipe, heart healthy and all that, which is probably why I originally tried it. And almost as fast as making a sandwich.

The barley flour has a very crunchy, sturdy texture and more powerful flavor than most flours, and very interesting with soup, which is largely how I use hot biscuits.  I expect you could put jam on, if that's your preference, for afternoon tea.  Or honey. Barley's a great nutritious food, good for your lungs among other things.

I love breads of all kinds, really can't manage without at least a slice for toast at breakfast, and maybe some croutons in soup, and sometimes toasted cheese on, for supper.  Good thing I don't have any gluten problems. And don't mind baking.

Also, making bread satisfies the baking need now and then, better for my health than cake, which would vanish all too soon, unless I force it on friends and neighbors, all of whom are on some diet or other.  

But even as I write I wonder if it would be nice to make a few lemon bars in the near future..after the apple turnovers are history, that is.  Not many people resist lemon bars, from Mary-Carol's recipe, handwritten on a little card now enshrined in my loose leaf personal recipe book.

Cooking's a bit like gardening that way, come to think of it.  I have recipes from Mary-Carol, from Marge, a long ago friend, from the long gone mother of another friend, from internet friends, all kinds of sources, just as you get slips and divisions of plants from all kinds of sources and they remind you of the giver.  My little food processor was a gift of another friend, Judy, and every time I use it she comes to mind.  

Or like art, where I use beads from another Judy, and Girija, and yarn from MaryAnn and Ash and other generous givers, and threads from many older women now not able to stitch any more, and ideas and teaching from friends in the embroiderers' group.  I honor them all by using their donated materials and ideas, too. I give back, too, and I think the recipients probably remember me when they use the materials, too.  At least that's the hope.